‘I didn’t think complex technology would interest you,’ he swiftly defended.
Her eyes flashed derision at him. ‘I can grasp the general concept of a sophisticated transport system which was your last project. You could have tried describing your new concept instead of deciding I’m too dim for you to share it with.’
‘I’ve never considered you dim.’
The vehement denial floated over her like an insubstantial blast of hot air. She heaved a defeated sigh. ‘You just don’t care enough about sharing, Fletcher. You push me away from you…’ She bit her lips as she fought back a threatening rush of tears. Unsure of containing them she waved a quick dismissal of any further argument and swung away to remove herself from his presence.
‘No.’ He grabbed her arm, halting her.
‘I want to see John,’ she choked out, not looking at him.
‘He’s asleep.’
She struggled to free herself, desperate not to break into open weeping, pleading, ‘I want to see him anyway.’
‘You’re doing the same thing,’ he tersely accused. ‘Pushing away from me.’
A mountain of anger erupted in her, blasting away the tears of weakness, giving her the strength to tear her arm out of his dominating grasp. He wasn’t taking in anything she’d said, wasn’t about to change his behaviour to make their relationship better. Not only had he virtually accused her of infidelity because he’d scorned being a guest at Jennifer’s wedding, he was twisting her argument around to lay fault at her door rather than look at what he’d been doing himself.
‘The only reason I’m here is because my son is here,’ she hurled at him with venomous ferocity. ‘And you know what I hope, Fletcher? I hope he doesn’t have one skerrick of your child-prodigy genetic pattern, because if that proves to be the case, I hope you’ll lose interest in him and leave him to me. And I’ll teach him that everyone has value and not to arbitrarily dismiss them because they’re not the same as him. I’ll teach him to be a caring human being. I’ll even teach him to try to understand his father who never learnt those lessons.’
It wasn’t a smack in the face that was of no real account this time. It was a hard hit, striking at the basis of their contract, and it gave Tammy vicious satisfaction to see the draining of his arrogant confidence, the blank shock in his eyes, the loss of colour in his face, the frozen look that told her his brilliant mind was jammed for once.
She marched off to the nursery.
John was asleep, lying peacefully in his cot, unaware of the war being waged between his parents. He was only four months old—too soon to tell if he was unusually gifted.
Let him be mine, Tammy begged whatever Fate had worked so malevolently to make her pregnant in the first place. Surely this one kindness could be granted to her.
Please…let him be mine!
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
FLETCHER withdrew from her.
He made no reference to her criticism of their relationship. Over the next few weeks their only conversation was about household arrangements. They lived in the same space, ate meals together, slept in the same bed, but he’d wrapped an impenetrable wall around himself that made him untouchable. Even caring for their son was separated into mutually exclusive areas.
They didn’t employ a nanny. Tammy dropped that idea, feeling that neither of them could bear the intrusion of another person in their tension-ridden world. Fletcher looked after John while she worked her three days at the hospital. She had full custody of him when Fletcher met up with his colleagues at an apartment Hans was renting on the other side of the harbour. At other times they were careful to share their son on a fairly equal basis, both of them adopting the truce-like state of polite consideration.
As one miserable week followed another, Tammy deeply regretted having thrown such a comprehensive rejection at Fletcher. He was not a bad person. And saying she didn’t want their child to be like him was a very nasty blow below the belt, implying she’d hate the situation if he was and that wasn’t true. She’d work hard at providing John with a happier childhood than Fletcher had known.
As soon as their son was settled for the night, Fletcher went to his computer room, and during those lonely hours before she went to sleep alone, Tammy thought a lot about what he’d told her about his life. She wondered if his arrogance was actually a coat of protective armour, a denial that anything or anyone could hurt him. Their intimacy throughout her pregnancy had probably made him feel secure about giving what he did of himself to her, but giving anything of himself to others on a more casual basis…that was territory he didn’t want to occupy. It opened him up to responses he preferred not to deal with.
The man with the super-brain…the man with more money than most people could get their heads around…a dazzling man who wasn’t quite human like everyone else…except he was.
Human enough to want her so much he’d been unable to stop himself from pursuing her…human enough to love their child without reservation…human enough to erupt with violent feeling when he thought his trust in her had been betrayed…human enough to be so deeply wounded by her not wanting their son to be like his father that he’d retreated back inside himself, disconnecting from her as much as was possible without contravening the terms of their contract.
She missed what they had shared together.
She wished she had given more consideration, more understanding, to why he chose to let her go off alone to social activities instead of resenting his refusal to window-dress a private contract that was no one else’s business.
She wanted him to want her again.
The huge problem was—how to reverse what seemed irreversible.
Jennifer and Adam returned from their honeymoon. They’d spent three weeks touring Africa and Egypt and Jennifer had video footage she wanted to show and a heap of gifts for the gang. Instead of their monthly luncheon in Sydney, she suggested they all come up to the Blue Mountains for the weekend, bringing their men and babies with them, have a long, late lunch with her and Adam at his Leura cottage on the Saturday afternoon, stay at the famous Carrington Hotel at Katoomba overnight and do whatever they liked on Sunday before going home.
Everyone loved the idea.
‘Tell Fletcher he can go trekking into the Jamieson Valley,’ Jennifer advised Tammy. ‘That might get him to come. You said you climbed the mountain on Lord Howe.’
‘Yes, we did. But if I end up coming alone, don’t make a big thing of it. Okay?’